The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly
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Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking
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Who Was Will Henry? Who the hell was Will Henry? He is mentioned every now and then in the library forum, in the chat room, in the comments. But so far no one has really explained who he was and what he had to do with TTWD. The short answer is that he was a writer. His real name was Will Deer and he was a lawyer in a suburb of Chicago. He wrote pulp fiction in the 60's, 70's and up through the mid 80's. He died in the fall of 1986. Before explaining his contribution to our art form, a little history is in order. Before the internet, before DVD's, even before VCR's, there were books. In the mid 60's erotic media consisted essentially of magazines, grainy 8mm film and books. Books were sold in "adult bookstores" which were located in the seedier parts of the downtown cores of major American cities. "Dirty books" were big back then, and these crummy porn shops had racks and racks of them. At that time the spanking fetish was little understood by the producers of mainstream porn who furnished the content for adult bookstores. It seemed to be lumped in with "sadism and masochism" or "bondage", stuff featuring mainly female domination. In New York City there were the Nutrix pamphlets and other very short booklets that featured spanking stories and a few drawings or cheesy pictures. Spanking content in magazines was rare and poorly presented, if at all. You were just as likely to see a photo of some crazed misogynist whacking some woman with a tennis racquet or a frying pan as an actual spanking, yet they called it "spanking". I actually remember a magazine I once saw called "Hit and Fun". Will Henry was an oasis in a desert of porn that displayed no understanding of what spankophiles wanted. He was one of us. He wrote under the names Will Henry and William St Cyr. There were several other pseudonyms. Some of his more famous titles were: Spankmanship, Suburban Spanking, Spanking Stewardesses, Modern Spanking and The Headmaster. Many of his books were actually collections of "case studies" which were first person accounts of wife spanking, sorority initiations, spanking clubs, and family discipline. These read a lot like the "letters" featured in magazines like "Mr.", which are here in the library. Some of these, I suspect, were actually penned by Mr. Henry himself. He tended toward M/F but did include a good bit of F/M content as well. The following passage from The Passionate Prisoners is typical: With little difficulty, Dale managed to pull his attractive victim into position over his knees, her long, nylon-clad legs up on the bed and in full view. Her girlishly buxom, pantie-clad bottom wriggled anxiously over his lap,... Here is an F/M scene from the same work: From the beginning, Arthur was kept under extremely strict discipline. There can be little doubt that his Aunt Helen was a sadist. For the slightest infraction of her rules, Arthur was soundly spanked with the hand and hairbrush. He was always spanked on the completely bare bottom, and his aunt did not even permit him to prepare himself. Instead, his aunt personally lowered his trousers and shorts for him, even after he was a mature young man well into his teens. Henry's books were sold by several publishing houses including Satan Press and Eros Goldstripe. They were also pirated by many others and republished under altered titles. Henry was famous for writing very evocative scenes that got right to the heart of the spankophile fantasy. He never dwelled on plot or characterization, preferring instead to paint lurid word pictures of spanking scenes frequently followed by sex. His novels featured multiple characters and scenes, usually one pairing per chapter. He'd describe a scene then quickly move to something else, like a different pair of characters. His emphasis was on home and school spanking and while there was a bit of bondage, he never strayed very far into BDSM. He pioneered many themes which readers now recognize as familiar. For example, the male disciplinarian in an apartment shared by several females is, to my knowledge, his invention. I've used it several times as have others. He was probably alone in featuring sorority and club initiation scenes in both his "case studies" and novels. The thing that distinguished Henry from other writers of his era like Paul Little, Gerda Mundinger and Joe Weiss, was his emphasis on setting. His books were nearly always set in a suburban late 1950's-early 1960's America. They most always dealt with domestic or school discipline. Today it's like reading a spanking story set on the old prime time soap opera "Peyton Place", or in an episode of "Father Knows Best" or even in Mayberry RFD. The characters are ordinary people in the heartland of country America or suburbia. The milieu has a veneer of mom and apple pie innocence, under which the reader often finds a smouldering sexuality fuelled by consensual and semi-consensual spanking. Husbands spank wives, girlfriends spank boyfriends, room-mates spank each other, high school athletic clubs have paddling initiations. Sometimes wife swapping clubs form that feature spanking. You don't find exotic locations, New York chic, or elements of BDSM in Henry's works (except occasional bondage), but you do find spanking and sex - and plenty of it. The good news is that today his novels are available in e-book form from Olympiapress. And all for the princely sum of $1. Happy reading. 26 comments:
Miss_Naughty said...
That was so interesting. How lucky are we that the internet and this fabulous library has made it so easy for us to enjoy TTWD, without having to scavenge around for what turns us on. Looking at his e-books will be fascinating. 27 April 2012 17:34
westviking said...
I think he was the greatest spanking author ever. Modern Spanking, Spankmanship and Spanking Today is his best books. Marital Spanking is good too. He is writing mostly M/f and M/F but also F/M, f/M, m/F, F/m and F/f. The women have skirts or dresses, slips or half-slips and girdles or garter belts and stockings with stocking-tops. It was in The Golden Age of Spanking. His books were the first spanking books I read in English. I bought two of them in Sweden and two in London. Thank you Rollin for telling us who he was. 27 April 2012 20:15
Sebastian said...
I remember his stories. He was certainly one of the best. I had always wanted to see his stories in the Library. I didn't read all of his stories, but what I read was very good. 28 April 2012 01:13
tyrport said...
I remember the first explosion of spanking books you could buy in a bookstore came from Grove Press. The Pearl was the first I bought. That wasnt until the 70's. 28 April 2012 01:36
catmama said...
Thank you Rollin. This was very informative. As a newbie to this I find learning about our history and the development of this extremely interesting and gratifying. 28 April 2012 01:37
njrick said...
I've never read his work. Although I tend to prefer more emphais on plot, it sounds that he did what he did well enough that it's worth a read. Thanks for the introduction. 28 April 2012 03:45
Alef said...
I have seen references to him, but never (as far as I remember) read anything by him. It is always nice and useful to have a feeling for the history of a subject. Thanks! 28 April 2012 08:45
islandcarol said...
Great Article! I particulary enjoyed reading the excerpts you selected. The world of spanking lit has certainly progressed in the last 40 years. IC 28 April 2012 10:24
ChardT said...
I remember him well. Most of the spanking material was horrible back in the 70s and early 80s when I first ventured into the local adult book stores but there were some bright spots including anything by Will Henry (I think he used some other aliases as well). It really was amazing how utterly clueless most of the porn producers were about spanking then. 29 April 2012 00:39
spankedbywife said...
What a trip down memory lane! There was one store in Seattle that was a classic 'dirty book store' that I used to shop at when I was in town. I think some of my first visits were in the early to mid 1960's even before I was old enough to drive. Seemed like no one asked me my age. I guess my money was as good as an adult's. There were packs of the Nutrix books wrapped in clear plastic clipped with closepins to strings all along the store. You had to reach hight to get to them. I think there were some of the packs of individual photos there too. It was quiet the place; seedy seems like an appropriate description. I was lucky enough to have a collection of Will Henry's books and they still are fun to read. They are stashed away in a large trunk along with some 8mm movies and magazines from the 1960's and 1970's. 30 April 2012 21:36
drkeate said...
I remember reading a collection of his stories in the 80s. They were very hot; I paarticularly remember wives being made to stand in the corner with their panties down before as well as after a spanking, and one having her bottom washed at length with a wet flannel before she went over the knee to increase the sting. 2 May 2012 06:08
Redskinluver said...
It may have well been Will Henry, but I remember a paperback from that era called "Teenage Spanking." And one called "Spanking and the Single Girl" well could have been him too. Maybe Rollin or someone will know. Books like these , found in "dirty bookstores" or sometimes a special section of the long-vanished newstands of that era, and things like Letters to Mr were all that spankos had back then. 2 May 2012 19:12
canadianspankee said...
I can remember obtaining some of the reading material back in the early 70's but never took note to the writer's name as I always presumed they were not true stories or the real name of the writer. Now all those stories for a $1. Seems to me I paid a lot more then that for those stories back in the day...LOL Thanks for an insight into a man's life that truely must have had some remarkable personal experiences to draw from for the stories he wrote. 2 May 2012 23:38
corncrake said...
Reading this excellent article took me back many decades, to the days when I made timid forays into the few dubious places where anything spanking might be found. I clearly remember Will Henry's name as being a guarantee of consistently well written and more convincing stories. Thank you for bringing back the memories so vividly. 4 May 2012 09:39
TheEnglishMaster said...
Thank you - I had always wondered about the oft-mentioned Will Henry. This was very informative, and that M/F scene very evocative. 7 May 2012 00:44
Robert56 said...
Thanks Rollin for this very insightfull description of Will Henry. I had read somewhere else (can't recall at the moment) that Will Henry was most likely responsible for most if not all of the letters to the editor appearing in MR. Magazine. Many of those letters appear here in the library with updates appearing every so often. I first discovered the spanking letters in MR in about 1972. Yes, I agree with others who remember those days, the spanking material (if you could even find it) was awful. That all changed in the early 80's when Nu-West hit the scene(but that's another story). I really enjoyed reading the letters in MR and waited anxiously each month for the new issue to hit the racks. You could find MR. in any liquor store that had a magazine rack and that's where I got mine. I especially liked any teenage domestic discipline stories and there were some great ones over the years. Rollins description of many of Will Henrys stories being personal accounts told to him makes sence. Like I said, my favorite reading would be about young or older teenage girls finding themselves in trouble at school or at home and facing the consequences. I could and would love to go into detail but I have already taken up way to much space in this comment. So to end, Kudos to Rollin for introducing us to Will Henry and check out the letters to MR here in the library. Great reading here. 15 August 2012 01:13
PhilK said...
What you say about Will Deer/Henry contributing letters to MR magazine reminds me that, before he rose to prominence (or infamy) as Tony Blair's chief spin doctor, Alastair Campbell used to pen a lot of the 'Readers' Letters' in Forum magazine, a Penthouse spin-off. Someone who worked there told me that many of the letters Campbell fabricated pretended to be from women recounting how they'd been spanked, though I've no way of knowing whether that's true.... 16 August 2012 00:08
MarkPhoenix said...
I would have to say that Will Henry was probably the writer that sparked my interest in spanking and spanking stories. Although I always tend to think of him as "William St. Cyr," because I first encountered him under that particular pseudonym. How many different pseudonyms did he use? Besides Will Henry and William St. Cyr (or occasionally, Will St. Cyr), I know he used the name Daryl Fletcher. And I have a couple of paperbacks (which I am certain were reprints of his) that used other names. Also, is there a complete bibliography of his works anywhere? 18 August 2012 01:06
Goodgulf said...
I believe you can buy ecopies of his books at www.olympiapress.com . They have tons of old books there - usually for a dollar per book. Goodgulf 20 August 2012 03:05
jubal41 said...
I bought several of Henry's books and stories many years ago. I also have downloaded them form olympiapress. In my opinion best spanking stories ever especially when it comes to discipline for teenage girls. Love the details and the fact that so many of his girls have very well developed bottoms. 27 February 2014 01:38
CarolinaPaddler said...
Rollin, thank you for this intriguing look at Will Henry. I discovered will Henry and his book, Spanked Stewardesses at Kinematic on a personal trip to New York City. I remember reading clipping the covers together and reading and savoring the novel all the way back down the tracks pasted Washington, D.C. It melted the hours away. He was the master of writing spanking stories. 17 March 2014 14:04
lesliejones said...
A friend in the scene gave me some of his books. They were absolutely delightful! Parents spank errant daughters and sometimes he even got into one of my favorite areas--role reversal, where, for example, a daughter gets to spank her mom when the latter gets a speeding ticket. And yes, he would focus on the daughter's taking the mom's girdle down and unhooking her stockings. 27 February 2015 01:01
JohnS47 said...
I ran across a couple of his books back in the early 70s when spanking material of that magnitude was almost non-existent. I thought I had hit the jackpot! Both were 'case study' type books, one on spanking in general,the other on sorority paddling, a subject that I'd had a major fascination with for years. Both were real eye openers and til this very day, two of my favorite reads of all time. 10 March 2015 18:38
Spankdaddy said...
Sorry I'm late to the party with my comment. I remember reading his books when I was a teenager. I lived in New York and back then Times Square was wall to wall adult book stores. I was never questioned about my age. I had a newspaper route then. I would use some of my income to feed my SpankO curiosity. What I remember best are his Sorority spanking stories. That has always been a hot button for me. Yes, those were the good old days. What is interesting is that back then the sorority initiation stories weren't fiction. I know first hand from a female cousin who was a sorority girl that she really got paddled in the 60's. 3 September 2015 17:26
Redskinluver said...
I remember his name as an author of spanking books like those mentioned in Rollin's excellent article. I also remember the"dirty book stores" from occasional visits to Washington DC or New York back in the day.. And haunting the local newsstand for the latest MR once I discovered its existence.. 5 September 2015 01:37
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Thanks for a great job.
B